No one can fill the gap left by Ravi Shankar. All his life he strove to unite eastern and western cultures. His fervour silenced cynicism. His musicianship opened new horizons for the likes of Yehudi Menuhin, George Harrison and Philip Glass. Hybrids were not Shankar’s aim. Instead he hoped discrete styles would meet, coexist and enrich one another. The guru-sitarist died in 2012 aged 92, still working on his first opera, Sukanya, named after his third wife, mother of his sitar protege daughter Anoushka Shankar.

Completed, arranged and conducted by David Murphy, Sukanya was given its world premiere last week in a UK tour originating at the Curve, Leicester. I saw it at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Not every seat was sold but the responsive audience, whichever way you measured it, reflected the city’s demographic mix. You wouldn’t see as many saris in a decade at the Royal Opera House, a co-producer in this work.

Anoushka Shankar: 'I still get to interact with my father through the music'

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With minimal but evocative designs by 59 Productions, the semi-staging was a visual treat. Voiles and silks the colours of earth and trees filled the stage, worn by dancers using ancient and modern styles. Splashes of acid pink and sky-blue added contrast. Projected backdrops of misty wooded landscapes, palaces and sunsets captured the heat and mystery of India. The evening opened with a solo sitarist improvising an alap, the start of a raga, in semi-darkness. Throughout, five traditional musicians, playing tabla, the oboe-like shehnai and various percussion, conjured sour drones and mesmerising overtones, with konnakol singers rattling out rhythms at frenetic speed while the dancers twirled, whirled and stamped.

That would have been enough for most appetites. Using an ancient tale from the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, the story of Sukanya – the young princess who mistakenly blinds an old man and magically falls in love with him – could have been told in familiar Indian music-theatre mode with Bollywood song. Shankar wanted more, namely proper opera. In his mind that meant full orchestra, chorus and operatic voices, singing in western notation, alongside the extemporising and microtonality of eastern music.

So on this same stage, ranged around dancers and Indian musicians like a baffle, were the London Philharmonic Orchestra (long-time collaborators of Shankar’s), the BBC Singers and an operatically trained cast led by the pure-voiced soprano Susanna Hurrell in the title role, with Alok Kumar, Keel Watson, Njabulo Madlala, Michel de Souza and Eleanor Minney.

It’s a tender story, set to a somewhat leaden libretto by Amit Chaudhuri. Vocal lines straddled sentences, making for mawkish moments. Murphy’s orchestral score enhances mood and atmosphere, with occasional excursion into syrupy string hoedown but little in the way of individuality. Somehow it didn’t matter. The exciting and pounding build-up to the finale is driven by Indian progressions and the brilliance of the dancers. Shankar worked on the unfinished opera until the last days of his life. It was a gift of love to his young wife. Such a gesture has its own resonance. His last utterances were worth hearing, even if it wasn’t easy to know which were his, which the dedicated Murphy’s. Yet it was hard not to ponder how the old Hindu tale could have been modernised and darkened. What might that lover of subverted Indian mythology, Salman Rushdie, have made of such a story?

This telling of the Orpheus myth was vivid and raw, emotionally intense and musically thrilling

At the Royal Opera House, Verdi’s Don Carlo, grandest of grand operas, returned for its third revival in Nicholas Hytner’s production, here sung in the Italian version. Designed by Bob Crowley, it still looks spectacular, from the louring obscurity of the monastery to the brilliant sunlight and golden facade of Valladolid Cathedral (both Hytner and Crowley were back to make adjustments to the garden scene and the auto-da-fé). Bertrand de Billy conducted a decent performance that just about overcame the hazards of last-minute cast changes, thanks chiefly to the secure, effortless and naturally confident singing of the American tenor Bryan Hymel in the title role. The chorus was excellent, the orchestra unusually lacklustre. As Philip II, the Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov, just three years older than Hymel, was powerfully depressive in the Act IV study scene but couldn’t quite convince as an ageing father. Christoph Pohl (Rodrigo), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Princess Eboli) and, after a hesitant start, Kristin Lewis (Elizabeth) had fine moments. But, heck, these are niceties. This is an opera you never want to miss if it comes your way. There are three more performances.

‘Effortless’: Bryan Hymel in the title role of Don Carlos at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Observer

Monteverdi’s 450th birthday fell last week. This shadowy Italian composer, musician and priest from Cremona, who became maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, Venice, has never been more celebrated. His originality, and his forging of old styles and new, from late Renaissance to early baroque, made him the most influential musician of his time. Comparisons with his contemporary Shakespeare stand up to scrutiny. The London baroque festival featured his two masterpieces, the Vespro della Beata Vergine and his first opera, L’Orfeo. The 1610 Vespers, as they’re commonly called, didn’t sound their magisterial best. Vividly played by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra but disappointingly sung by the Belgian vocal ensemble Vox Luminis, the performance was neither earthy or unearthly. The Vespers need both. Problems with tuning, combined with no director, made for a lacklustre account (though it may sound better on the Radio 3 recording).

L’Orfeo, superbly performed by I Fagiolini and the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, was the polar opposite. Subtitled a “play in music”, since in 1607 no one was yet quite sure what to call this new form in which “all the actors are to sing their parts”, this telling of the Orpheus myth was vivid and raw, emotionally intense and musically thrilling. Matthew Long sang Orfeo with pliant tone and urgent expression, as if living every tremor of the musician’s suffering. The moment of his loss of Euridice mesmerised and gripped. Rachel Ambrose Evans’s Euridice, William Purefoy’s Speranza/ Shepherd and Greg Skidmore’s Shepherd/ Infernal Spirit stood out in a mainly strong cast, effectively semi-staged (as far as one could see; St John’s Smith Square is not the easiest viewing venue) by Thomas Guthrie. Directing from the keyboard, sometimes singing, Robert Hollingworth proved – apart from anything – that conductors do, after all, have their uses in early music. He even played the tambourine.